Days after admitting that he was a diminished force in the arms trafficking world he once dominated, Viktor Bout has joined the Russian political scene after his election to a regional legislature this week.

According to Radio Free Europe, the Ulyanovsk regional election commission said in a statement that Bout had won a seat on its regional assembly after party-line voting between September 8 and 10. Bout is a member of the nationalist Liberal Democratic Party of Russia and was elected as part of Russian regional and local elections for governors, local legislatures, city councils, and some national elected positions.

Bout would become the second Russian elected to regional legislatures after serving time in a U.S. prison. Bout spent 10 years in a medium-security prison in Marion, Ill. Maria Butina, who served a brief prison term in U.S. prison in Florida in 2019 for acting as an unregistered foreign agent, was elected to the Russian national parliament in 2021.

Bout was convicted in a federal court in New York in 2011 on conspiracy charges including conspiring to kill Americans. He was arrested in Thailand in 2008 as part of a sting operation designed by U.S. narcotics agents. Extradited to the U.S. and then convicted, Bout was sentenced to 25 years in jail. But he served only 10 years, freed last December after he was exchanged for American basketball star Brittney Griner, who faced a lengthy term in a Russian prison for narcotics charges.

In an interview earlier this week with the New York Times, Bout said he aimed for a local political career to understand Russia better after his long absence. Bout did not explain his specific interest in the Ulyanovsk region.

“When you’re absent for 15 years from country, you need to start somewhere,” he told the Times. “So for me, going into regional office, it’s a better way to understand the problems. I need to meet people. I need to learn how they live.”